Free Love's Rhythm by Lexxie Couper Page B

be alone. He wanted to climb into a bottle and stay there. Drink his shock away until the hurt in his soul was drowned. Get so drunk he didn’t have to consider that every time he got back on his feet he found or lost another person in his family.
    He swung away from Jennifer, studying the darkness beyond her front porch. Murriundah sat silent around him, as if it felt his disbelief. “Where’s my car?”
    She stiffened. “Where are you going?”
    “To the pub.”
    “To the Arms? Not to Lauren?”
    He bit back a harsh growl. “No, not to Lauren.” Not right at this moment. He didn’t think that was smart. He wanted to ask her why she hadn’t told him. He wanted to ask her if it was true, if Josh really was his son? His son.
    His gut knotted.
    He needed to go. Now.
    He needed a drink. He needed…
    Lauren.
    “I’ve gotta go,” he muttered, stepping down Jennifer’s front steps. “I’ll come collect my car keys tomorrow.”
    “I don’t think—” Jennifer began, but he ignored her. He hurried away, the night’s chill biting at his skin. His jacket was inside, along with the keys to his rental car, but he didn’t want to go back into Jennifer’s house. Not when one look at the bed’s crumpled duvet would remind him immediately of what he and Lauren had been doing on it moments before she revealed she had a son. He had his wallet and his phone. That’s all he needed tonight. That and a bottomless bottle of scotch.
    The loose gravel on the side of the road crunched under his feet as he made his way to the Cricketer’s Arms. He didn’t have to orientate himself to know where to go. A person could walk from one side of Murriundah to the other in thirty minutes flat. All he needed to do was find the main drag, a straight strip of crumbling bitumen that sliced the town in two, and follow it toward the mountains overlooking the eastern end of town. He refused to think about the situation. He refused. He focused on the sound his feet made, focused on putting one foot in front of the other. He wouldn’t let himself think about it. Not now. Not yet.
    Not until he’d had a drink.
    Not until he was well and truly drunk and numb. Not until he could think about what Lauren had done without wanting to… Christ, without wanting to what? Wring her bloody neck for keeping the truth from him? Scream at her until he lost his voice—and wouldn’t Walter Winchester just love that? Shake her? Hug her?
    Kiss her for giving him family when he thought he had none?
    Fall to his knees and sob at her feet?
    Turn away from her? Run away from her—and your son?
    Less than twenty minutes later he was sitting in a booth in the back of the pub, wrapped in the warmth of the Cricketer’s Arms’ blazing open fire, the smell of beer, old cigarette smoke and peanuts flowing through him with each breath he took. His fingertips still stung from the cold and his head still hurt—more so from the surge of blood flowing through the bruise on his temple thanks to his walk. His belly burned from the two scotches that he’d downed straight up within a minute of walking into the bar. All these sensory inputs and all he could think about was one woman and one teenage boy he’d never met.
    He stared at the glass in his hand, the surface of the amber liquid within somehow glinting under the muted lights. He sat in the shadows, knowing the barkeeper was watching him. Knowing the man was about ten seconds away from recognising him. Knowing but not caring.
    He lifted the glass to his lips and threw back his head, swallowing the scotch in one mouthful. It turned to liquid fire on the way to his gullet, a stream of heat that should have made him feel less numb. It didn’t.
    He poured another shot from the bottle he’d bought, the only bottle of Chivas Regal the Cricketer’s Arms had on the shelf, and sent it down his throat after the third.
    And still, he felt…
    “Thirsty,” he muttered, refusing to ponder how he felt. He wasn’t